So yeah, long story short: My band won a regional radio contest to support Motley Crue this past Tuesday. Supposedly hundreds of bands entered, and we were selected as one of the top 5 to be submitted to MC's management, who ended up picking us. Pretty amazing feeling, but the experience of actually doing the show was a mixed bag. Felt great to be on that stage and play to that many people, and the actually set went really, really well - but the whole thing was handled with this "Get in, do your soundcheck, do your set, and then get the fuck out" attitude. It seems like the whole thing is a publicity stunt by their management to make it seem like they really care about helping out bands, but it's far from the truth. We were forced to mark up our merch to what they charge. I know that that's a fairly normal process, but it would have been different if they were only charging $15 for CDs and $25 or $30 for t-shirts... we had to charge $20 for CDs and $40 for shirts (which are only one-color logo shirts with our symbol on the back)... so in the end our hopes of selling tons of merchandise were slashed to pieces and I feel like a lot of people wrote us off just because of the high prices. Overall I feel like we would have been better off opening for a band playing to 500 people instead of 2,000+ if it had been a band that was more appropriate for us to open for. Not only are most Motley Crue fans not interested in a band that sounds like us, they generally don't see the value in supporting smaller bands, because they're so brainfucked with that mentality of "If they were any good, wouldn't they already be popular?"... So yeah, overall was great to be able to do it and the set itself went great, but it was an underwhelming experience.

MindMaze setlist:
01 Stand Up and Fight
02 Breaking the Chains
03 This Holy War
04 Remember
05 Never Look Back

So yeah, long story short: My band won a regional radio contest to support Motley Crue this past Tuesday. Supposedly hundreds of bands entered, and we were selected as one of the top 5 to be submitted to MC's management, who ended up picking us. Pretty amazing feeling, but the experience of actually doing the show was a mixed bag. Felt great to be on that stage and play to that many people, and the actually set went really, really well - but the whole thing was handled with this "Get in, do your soundcheck, do your set, and then get the fuck out" attitude. It seems like the whole thing is a publicity stunt by their management to make it seem like they really care about helping out bands, but it's far from the truth. We were forced to mark up our merch to what they charge. I know that that's a fairly normal process, but it would have been different if they were only charging $15 for CDs and $25 or $30 for t-shirts... we had to charge $20 for CDs and $40 for shirts (which are only one-color logo shirts with our symbol on the back)... so in the end our hopes of selling tons of merchandise were slashed to pieces and I feel like a lot of people wrote us off just because of the high prices. Overall I feel like we would have been better off opening for a band playing to 500 people instead of 2,000+ if it had been a band that was more appropriate for us to open for. Not only are most Motley Crue fans not interested in a band that sounds like us, they generally don't see the value in supporting smaller bands, because they're so brainfucked with that mentality of "If they were any good, wouldn't they already be popular?"... So yeah, overall was great to be able to do it and the set itself went great, but it was an underwhelming experience.

MindMaze setlist:
01 Stand Up and Fight
02 Breaking the Chains
03 This Holy War
04 Remember
05 Never Look Back

I would kill for this opportunity for the band I'm in to open for Motley Crue (ok not kill, but you get the point).I mean I would just be glad that I would play for that many people and get to see Motley for free.Of course my band nowhere near fits the style of Motley, it's more of a U2/Journey/Post-New Jersey Bon Jovi type of sound.The biggest show we've played since I joined was for about 600-1,000 people (opening for the Swingin' Medallions).Anyway glad to see your band got to.

Yeah, I've been getting that attitude from people about voicing complaints, with shit like "You guys should just shut up and be happy you got the opportunity"... That's nice, but just like a number of other things we as a band have to put up with, the reason why the situation sucks is because everyone has accepted the notion that you're not entitled to anything better. We were treated as practically sub-human. We weren't allowed in the venue until 10 minutes before we had to do our soundcheck, and our passes were voided within 5 minutes of getting off stage. We were given absolutely no accommodations (they charged us for water, for fuck's sake), and them forcing us to price-match them on their ridiculously overpriced merchandise absolutely destroyed any chance we had at making any kind of money, or essentially actually making people remember us after the performance. It's also worth noting that the band played two nights in a row at the venue and we played #2 - so there was absolutely NO press coverage of it. MC didn't even allow the band's photographer in the night we played. Truth be told, we actually got more worthwhile exposure from the announcement that we won than we got by actually playing the show. Yeah, it's nice to be able to SAY we did it, but I really don't think it did us very much good in the big picture.

Ultimately I'm angry at myself though, because I allowed myself to buy into the hype that this was going to be some life-changing experience, even though I really knew better all along. It was my fault that I believed we would be treated even a single notch about being assumed to be some totally unworthy god-awful local band, who only was involved to desperately try to meet the members of Motley Crue. I really could've cared less about all of that stupid shit, I just wanted to professionally have the ability to do our thing and win people over, which they just made it incredibly difficult to do. Most of the stage crew people realized during our soundcheck that we meant business, but all the production people just treated us like shit the entire time.

really this should have been a real boost for you guys. What a bunch of assholes. I can't say I'm really surprised though coming from these overated has-been junkies and don't be too hard on yourself, anybody trying to make it through with a band would have jump on this occasion too.

I've never bought this crap of when a band holds a contest to see about smaller bands opening for them. To me it reeks of a band trying to look like they care about helping smaller bands and also at the same time, not having to share any $ with any opening band(s) so they can have it all to themselves.

Yeah, I've been getting that attitude from people about voicing complaints, with shit like "You guys should just shut up and be happy you got the opportunity"... That's nice, but just like a number of other things we as a band have to put up with, the reason why the situation sucks is because everyone has accepted the notion that you're not entitled to anything better. We were treated as practically sub-human. We weren't allowed in the venue until 10 minutes before we had to do our soundcheck, and our passes were voided within 5 minutes of getting off stage. We were given absolutely no accommodations (they charged us for water, for fuck's sake), and them forcing us to price-match them on their ridiculously overpriced merchandise absolutely destroyed any chance we had at making any kind of money, or essentially actually making people remember us after the performance. It's also worth noting that the band played two nights in a row at the venue and we played #2 - so there was absolutely NO press coverage of it. MC didn't even allow the band's photographer in the night we played. Truth be told, we actually got more worthwhile exposure from the announcement that we won than we got by actually playing the show. Yeah, it's nice to be able to SAY we did it, but I really don't think it did us very much good in the big picture.

I get what you mean, when our band played that Swingin' Medallions show we got the shaft when it came to soundchecking, getting food and water (water was free but we had to wait a long time before they got it to us), getting our merch and our people on the guest list in, and not to mention they told us we had to start like almost an hour before the actually concert started so the full crowd of about 2,000-3,000 wasn't even there yet.We've played many shows that we got bad production and stage/venue management help.Anyway, what type of music does your band play anyway? I'm very curious.

It would be nice to be able to believe that Motley would do something to help out young/new bands, but I'm not surprised it went down like that. When is the last time anyone in that band did something that didn't benefit them?
I don't want to catagorize all bands with Motley, or others that do what they did, but it seems today everyone loves bitching about the state of the music business, but no one does anything about it. Charging $20 for a cd and $40 for a shirt alone makes me realize they don't care. I remember concert tickets for $15 bucks and tour programs for $8. I don't know how kids today get to see all their favorite bands now.
But good for you for "winning" (and I mean that because of all the trouble you had to deal with) and maybe down the road you'll see some benefit from playing the show. At least you have the experience of playing in front of all those people.

Don't feel so bad about the experience. At least your bands writes better tunes than the band you opened for.

It sucks you were treated that way but I'm not surprised to hear that though. I've seen some club/bar promoters treat local bands like shit in the past. I'm not surprised this happened on the big stage. The price mark up for your merch sucks to. You can't expect people to pay $40 for a shirt of a band just starting out unless they are really blown away by you. Hopefully, you will get a chance to open up for a well known prog/power metal act soon that way you can at least play music for a crowd that would appreciate it.